In art and architecture, the ancient Maya rival the Egyptians and the Chinese, yet until recently the culture of this Central American people remained unknown to us. Major breakthroughs in the reading of Maya hieroglyphics now give details of the lives of actual people that shatter beliefs long held by archeologists.
A unique exhibit of supreme esthetic quality, The Blood of Kings, A New Interpretation of Maya Art, has been mounted by the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. These works of art, on loan from major European and American collections, not only prove the quality of mind and artistic achievement of an advanced society; they also tell us a new and different story.
The accepted myth of a benign elite of star-gazing priests who ruled an agrarian society, never thirsting for personal glory, has been exploded by a series of new findings. Ancient Maya settlements were not peaceful theocracies as previously claimed, but rival city states engaged in constant warfare. Not priests, but powerful kings ruled among a high caste of nobles, who engaged in blood-letting rites and took captives, whom they ritually murdered after subjecting them to debasing forms of torture.
Yet in their Classic Period (circa A.D. 200-900) the Maya created one of the most brilliant civilizations that ever exited. In writing, jade carving, stone sculpture, ceramic figurines, and pottery, they display extraordinary artistic skills for a people who must necessarily be classified as of the Stone Age; the Maya did not use metals.
They did have a functional written language - the only true written language in the hemisphere - and it is the deciphering of these part-image, part-phonetic symbols that has baffled experts for the past 150 years. Although only four Maya books survived the ravages of time and the Spanish Inquisition, we now know that the written history of the Americas began in 50 B.C. and not in 1492.
Even when we do not understand the meaning of its symbols and imagery, Maya art stuns us with a direct appeal to our aesthetic sense. It was an inherited art form over which the artist had little control, as the content, function, and mediums were established by strict tradition. Yet gradations of skill and subtle refinements of technique indicate individual creativity.
A clearly defined line and a sharp-edged silhouette are the primary characteristics of this imagery, whose purpose was to convey a message. As do the Chinese and the Japanese, the Maya used a pointed, flexible brush to create swift, flowing black lines, both in writing and painting. The inherent spontaneity of these forms indicates that the Maya did not trace their patterns.
In wall painting, the Maya achieved a degree of naturalism that was centuries in advance of Europe. Figures were drawn on freshly plastered walls, then filled in with color. Color was important, for it had symbolic value. The Maya used a wide range of pigments from natural substances such as iron oxides.
Pictorial sculpture in limestone and plaster adorns the facades and high roof combs of palaces and temples. Here major historical, religious, or mythical events, pictorially recorded for later generations,
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